“Tonight, we’re cancelling the Apocalypse!” – Marshall Pentecost
Swift shot: Godzilla meets Robotech ala Guillermo del Toro! While there is certainly enough mythology surrounding both of those franchises, what makes Pacific Rim stand alone is that it merely borrows from both without trying to remake either. Even the title is fresh and misleading. When I first heard about the movie I was like, “What the hell is that?” Then I heard GdT was directing, and wrote it, and I was on board. He always does a fine job with special effects, and armed with the fantastic folks at ILM – well, it’s a physically jarring thrill ride that has just enough story to not overwhelm nor bore the audience. In short, it’s a great action flick!
Beginning in the present, a dimensional rift appears in the Pacific rim and lets in a Kaiju – essentially a giant monster from the sea. That monster takes six days and 35 miles to finally take down with our conventional fighting forces. Thousands of people are lost in San Francisco. If that had been a one time event, it would have been enough, but it wasn’t, it seems that was just the first of many monsters creeping in through the crack of space and time deep in the Pacific Ocean.
The separate nations are ill-equipped to battle them alone; they all pool their money and secrets together to launch the Jaeger program. Essentially, the Jaegers are giant robots, that need two people to operate – one the left hemisphere and one the right. Teams of Jaeger drivers are heralded for their bravery in battle, they pilot these mammoth merchs with the bravado of bomber pilots from yesteryear. But unlike the man-made wars, these monsters never stop. In fact scientists are worried that soon they will be coming in pairs . . . or worse.
Gipsy Danger is one such Jaeger piloted by the scrappy Beckett brothers, Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff) and Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam). Things go awry for the brothers . . . flash-forward a few years, and Raleigh is working on a great wall. The wall is supposed to be able to keep the Kaiju out. Yea, not so much. Just like in real life, the government manages to make things ten times worse when they try to shut down the Jaeger program in favor of this giant wall that has so much FAIL written all over it, literally in fact!
Raleigh has been recruited to pilot one last desperate mission of rogue Jaeger teams led by Marshall Pentecost (Idris Elba). His heir apparent, Mako (Rinko Kikuchi) is eager to get some payback for her family’s untimely demise. Charlie Day and Burn Gorman play nerdy scientists who provide some chuckles with their divergent beliefs on how to deal with the Kaiju. One of my favorite character actors, Ron Perlman, makes a cameo as well. But, really, who gives a shit about any of this?!!? This is a movie about giant robots battling giant monsters all while the Earth stands united against a common alien enemy! You aren’t going to see it for the compelling story-line, folks!
Again, ILM did the special effects, the battles were on a grandiose scale, and the creatures were all creatively sculpted to allow you to get different moves from each. For instance one has a sword shaped head, and he uses it to stab at the Jaeger. What I found a comical, yet somehow necessary, homage to the Godzilla movies was the insistence on immediately naming the creatures once they broke the dimensional rift. There were other not so subtle nods to Robotech and Godzilla, but I didn’t find them overly hokey in execution.
What did bother me was the kind of back-handed way that “climate change” was used as a method to explain why the Kaiju were invading us now. That aside though, the politics pretty much got the hell out of the way and let you just sit back and enjoy the fighting and spectacular effects. I noticed there was a thank you to James Cameron in the credits, and I think he may have consulted on underwater battle sequences or something, because they looked sharp.
If you want a smart film, you aren’t seeing Pacific Rim . . . if you want to be entertained on a primal level, then this one is for you! I saw this in 3D, and there were some shots that warranted it, but I still say 3D is a gimmick that needs to die, like a Kaiju! Oh, stick around in the middle of the credits or you will miss a small surprise too.
